Consider this a *bookmark* post for quick links to these two Sound Transit flyover videos of the LINK Light Rail spine extensions north and south. I did make a few comments/notes about both of these animations below the videos.

This first flyover is the route heading south to Federal Way from the existing Angle Lake Station.

The auto traffic shown in videos kind of cracks me up, because it isn’t going to get better any time soon. It will likely be as bad as it is or get worse in the coming years – it’s literally how it works. So forget that free flowing traffic you see around the light rail lines. That traffic, when you’re on the light rail, will as often as it flows smoothly will be backed up all the way to downtown Seattle and probably south to Federal Way! Take that as a thing to smirk about as you enjoy that freely moving light rail trip to Federal Way in the future, it should be pretty nice!

Another thing about this entire light rail project is how much of the project actually ends up being “road and automobile” spending. The entire project should be renamed “Something something automobile enablement and a small rail transit project” to be more accurate. The hundreds and hundreds of millions for parking garages, road rebuilds, intersection rebuilds, new lights and new configurations just to make it easy to *drive* to the transit is mind boggling. But alas, in ole auto-dependent, non-walking, non-transit using America it is indeed what a city often has to do to encourage ridership from the suburban communities. I’m all here for that, it’s just sad we have to subsidize suburban ridership so much when there’s more than enough expansion opportunities inside the existing city urban areas that still need service!

I’m also curious, and articles will be forthcoming as these open up, about how the compounding ridership of each stop will end up creating an extremely packed ridership situation on the stop further in toward the city. Eventually, branch lines are seriously going to be needed to sprout off of the main trunk! In the meantime, it’s gonna be a great improvement!